ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a function of the capacity of members of an institution to extend the range of their interpretative voice through managing authoritatively the continual interpretation and making of their inherited tradition in relation to changing circumstances, both in the inner and in the external environments of their institution. The obvious way of thinking about development is to think in terms of creating new institutions and going out to conquer, or colonize, the world in some measure. When one re-reads the early writing of the workers at the Tavistock Institute, one is struck by how far ahead of the times they were. The formulation of socio-technical systems and of social systems as a defence against anxiety is a landmark in the history of psychodynamic thought. The scientific context was one in which there was a belief in scientific methods based on logico-positivism. W. R. Bion was interested in the unconscious present in social configurations.
